If you thought western Victoria’s recent heatwave was hard to cope with, then imagine nine successive days above 36 degrees Celsius...and there was no such thing as air-conditioning.
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A Stawell resident, who preferred not to be named, possesses a souvenir received while they were living in Servicetown in 1939.
The postcard certified South Australian residents had suffered through their greatest heatwave in history.
There were six days where the mercury soared well above 40 degrees Celsius, with the highest temperature being 47.6.
The lowest temperature during those nine days was still an incredible 36.9.
“Now we’ve got refrigerated air-conditioning to help us deal with the heat, but back then we only had tank water,” the resident said.
“That was also the year of the Black Friday fires in the Grampians and you could see the orange glow in the distance, even from Servicetown.”
So before you start to let out that groan of displeasure at the seemingly unbearable heat, maybe we can all appreciate Mother Nature has been a little kind to us since the South Australian heatwave of 1939.